


The Waters of True Love (Never Did Run Smoothly)

by ShyWhovian



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Bardcliff, F/M, Female Pronouns for Grell Sutcliff, Kid Fic in First Chapter, Mermaid Grell Sutcliff, These beans are precious okay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 05:11:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18887845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShyWhovian/pseuds/ShyWhovian
Summary: When the seven year old sea princess Grelle met nine year old Bard, a simple fisherman's son, her fascination with humans began. Twelve years later, after rescuing a dark haired prince in a storm, she falls madly in love. Desperate she seeks out the sinister and mysterious Undertaker, who promises her legs under the condition that she stay on land until such a time that she finds her true love.





	The Waters of True Love (Never Did Run Smoothly)

**Author's Note:**

> They are babies and this is adorable.

She hadn't meant to go out so far, just close enough to see the lights of the human world, that was all. As long as she wasn't seen it was fine and she was doing as her eldest sister Frances had said,she was out of sight. It hadn't been her fault that there was a net, seven year old Grelle thought to herself in dismay. It hurt too. The netting was rough and it seemed all her thrashing about only made it dig further into her arms and tail. She snarled, trying to lean down and bite at the material, attempting desperately to break free. One of her arms was pinned against her body, the other was free but without a knife it was of very little use. She was going to be in lots of trouble when she got back home; Frannie had told her not to go close to humans and now it was getting dark too; the sharks would be coming out and they'd gobble her up. She didn't want to be eaten! Angry tears were gathering at the corners of her eyes, though the little girl ignored them as she jerked forward trying once more to make a bid for freedom. The rope only cut tighter into her scaled tail, blood beginning to trickle out of it, staining the water in the same red shade as her hair. 

At the same time, luckily for the little mermaid girl, a young boy also happened to be out where he ought not to be. Nine year old Bardroy knew he wasn't supposed to be out on the rocks when evening was approaching, certainly not on his own with no one to catch him should he slip. But Bard wasn't afraid of the ocean, or of anything it could contain, he was a brave boy. The bravest nine year old there ever was; he could climb rocks and poke crabs and if the ocean ever tried to drown him, he'd fight it off with a stick, he thought fiercely. He'd climbed this particular rock pile before, though only ever when the tide was out and the stones themselves were dry as a bone, unlike now where the sea frothed below him and the stones were slippery with both water and seaweed. He wouldn't go out too far though, he thought, that would be dangerous. The sound of frantic splashing however made him reconsider and he looked over to where it was coming from in interest. A flash of red caught his eye and cautiously he approached it. Reaching the edge he looked down and gasped in astonishment. It was a little girl. Only she wasn't like any little girl he'd ever seen before; she had a fish tail. She was very still too and he frowned before leaning down to poke the back of her head. 

“Hey, are you okay? Are you dead?” He inquired curiously.

The girl rolled over to face him, sending him a glower that could have melted ice were she not quite as tangled as she was. Grelle bared her teeth threateningly. If he was going to poke her again then she was going to bite him, that had hurt too! It was then she realised that she was in fact, face to face with a human and she balked, trying to leap back but only managing a weak shuffle. Frannie was definitely going to be cross now, she thought, humans were dangerous. She'd been told all sorts of horrible things about them. About how they'd hunt mermaids and take their tails and hang them up on their walls. She shuddered. This human was only a small one though, Grelle realised, if he came closer to her then maybe she'd just be able to drown him, then he couldn't do anything to her. Now, all she had to do was get a hold of him. Tied up like this it was easier said than done. She thrashed around some more much to Bard's surprise and shouted 'Go away.' Only it didn't quite sound like that to Bard.

To Bard it sounded somewhat like the clicking sort of noise a dolphin would make mixed with some whistles and snarls, not really like language at all. He still shrank back though and she grinned in satisfaction. Maybe he should just leave her alone, clearly whatever she was, she didn't want him here even if she was all tied up like this. He started to wonder if she was perhaps one of the sea monsters his father had told him about once before, ones with sharp teeth that would drown and eat you. She certainly had pointy enough teeth for it. The boy was about to head off and leave her to her net when he noticed the blood. There was quite a bit of it now, Grelle's frantic thrashing only making the wounds in her tail worse and Bard decided he couldn't leave her. He may not know what she was, or her name or anything sensible like that but she was still a little girl and his father had told him that as a boy he had to help girls out. Now he just had to find a way how. 

He could go and fetch his father, he would have a knife or maybe some scissors that they could use to cut the net but that would mean leaving her alone. He didn't want to do that, it was darker now and she might get scared. She was only a very little girl, not grown up like he was. And besides that, there might be sharks, he'd only seen one once on a trip out to sea but his father told him that they would eat anything that was smaller than they were which probably included little fish girls. Determinedly he looked around, hoping a solution to his problem would come to him. It did. On top of the very big rock he was standing on, there was a smaller, far sharper rock. He could use it as a knife. 

With more bravery than he really felt Bard slid down into the water beside the girl, pinned between her tail and the rock, to which he was clinging with his free hand. Bard didn't know how to swim, so this was perhaps far more foolish than anything else but he couldn't reach her tail to begin cutting the net, so into the water he had to go. 

Grelle didn't much approve of this situation, between the knife-rock and the little boy in the ocean with her she was quite frantic now, even though her entire tail was in agony. None of this was very fun any more. She wanted to go home and be with her sisters and her little brother. Not stuck in a net with a human near her. She snarled at him again. Maybe if he thought she wasn't afraid and was in fact a fearsome predator, he'd go away and leave her alone. The truth was however that she was afraid, more frightened than she'd ever been before in fact and that the human didn't leave. Instead he began making his way towards her tail, moving the sharp rock towards her precious scales. She shut her eyes. He was going to cut her tail off, she just knew it. She was going to die here and no one would ever find her and all of her sisters were just going to forget about her. And baby Finny wouldn't even know all of the fun things she could've taught him.

Nothing happened. No pain. No blood. Nothing, except a quiet sawing noise. Grelle opened her eyes curiously. The human was cutting through the net; even as she watched bits of her tail were being freed and she could feel it loosening its hold. He was helping her. That didn't make any sense. Curiously, she leaned round to get a better look at his face, pushing her round glasses up her nose with her free hand. Humans, it turned out, looked an awful lot like merfolk did. If he'd had a tail he could easily have just been another merboy.

“Why are you trying to free me?” She asked slowly, trying to make the words as clear as possible. He hadn't understood her the first time obviously. She supposed that was normal, he was only a human, An said that they were very stupid.

Bard didn't respond. The green-eyed girl was obviously talking to him but he didn't know the words she was saying. Instead he continued his task, little pink tongue poking out of his mouth in his intense concentration. After a moment more of cutting the upper part of the net came off entirely, freeing her other arm and she let out a strange strangled sounding noise. The boy looked alarmed but didn't stop in his task. He was going to free the fish girl no matter what.

“You can't speak properly can you?” The blond boy asked with a small sigh, wondering why that was. Was she only a baby fish person? Perhaps if that were the case he could teach her to talk normally. He'd like that. He was quite a lonely little boy really, most of the other children on the island were far older than he was, or a lot younger. This girl, strange though she was, was the person the closest to his own age. Maybe they could be friends. He looked at her again. Maybe not. The sharp teeth were quite frightening. But her tail was very nice, almost as red as her hair and very smooth-looking. He wanted to touch it. And he did, letting go of the rock.

This was the wrong thing to do, Grelle hissed at him and slapped his hand away sharply.

“Hey! No touching. That's my tail.” 

It didn't matter that he was freeing her, it wasn't nice to touch other people's tails. Just because the human boy didn't have one that didn't mean he could just go around touching everyone else's. That was rude. She glowered at him again, face falling into a small, aggravated pout as she shoved her hair out of her face; it had fallen out of the nice braid An had put it in that morning. It seemed ages ago now as she'd snuck out of her classes earlier than she should to go and see the lights and the other interesting human things. Then the net, invisible in the water, had caught her and she'd not been able to free herself no matter how hard she'd tried. She was free now though, the last bit of the net fell away from her body and began sinking under the waves, down to the bottom of the ocean. With a delighted grin she kicked her tail in relief, swimming a small distance away from the boy and the rock. She hated nets. They cheated and they hurt. Not like the human. He'd not hurt her at all. He was making those funny chirping noises again though. She turned back to look at him and saw he was thrashing about. That wasn't how you swam!

His head went under the water and the thrashing grew worse as Bard tried to get back to the surface. Why had he let the rock go? The moment the fish girl had moved the current had pulled him under. He surfaced again, noticing her watching him with those huge bespectacled green eyes.

“Help me...”

Down he went again and he felt for certain this time it would be the end, but then she was there, a blur of red, holding him around the waist and dragging him back up to the surface, practically shoving him against the rocks. He got the message. Scrambling as though his life depended on it he made his way back to safety. Never had he been so grateful for the dry land beneath his feet before, he thought as he collapsed into a sit. Then he turned back to the ocean, head peeking over the edge with a small smile as Grelle, half submerged in the water surveyed him in quite the same manner. The boy had a nice smile, she decided and yellow hair just like Ronnie and baby Finny's but pretty blue eyes like Frances'. She smiled back at him, showing off her teeth and Bard flinched back again. They were still no less scary than they'd been the first time, he thought. She was just like a shark. But she could jump just like a dolphin he noted with a grin as she surged out of the water and landed back down gracefully. The boy laughed and clapped and jumped to his feet, trying to mimic her. He slipped on his landing however and landed on his bottom.

Grelle laughed. This human boy was silly but she liked him. Human's apparently weren't the monsters Frances said they were, nor the idiots that An did. As for Ran Mao's opinion on them, Grelle didn't know. The youngest of her older sisters was very quiet. 

She realised suddenly that she hadn't even told him her name yet. The little red -haired girl pointed to herself. 

“Grelle. Guh-reh-luh.” She had to say it slowly after all, he might not be an idiot but he still didn't seem very good at listening. 

The boy let out a chirp that almost sounded like 'grl' and she sighed. That wouldn't do at all, her name wasn't exactly difficult to say.

“Grell.”

“Gril”

“Guh-relle.”  
“Gu-rel.”

Well, that was almost right. She clapped encouragingly, then made an inquisitive sort of noise. Surely he had a name too? Humans must name their children after all, they couldn't all be called human, that'd be silly.

Bard tilted his head curiously at the noise before realising what click, click whistle wanted.

“Oh, Bard.” 

Grelle giggled. What a funny sounding word. Deep and long, she liked the 'ar' sound. 

“Barrrr”

“Nuh huh, Bard. Bar-duh.” She was nearly saying it right. She only had to put the duh on the end and she'd have it. Click, click, whistle was a very smart little girl Bard thought with a grin. “Bard.”

“Baarrduh.”

He cheered. She'd gotten it. Well, maybe there were a bit too many 'r's in there but it was still a good attempt. From behind him the sound of footsteps could now be heard and soon there was a voice shouting for him. His father. Bard sighed and got to his feet, taking one last look at the fish girl. 

“I've got to go now...Er..maybe if you're here tomorrow we can talk some more?” He didn't think she'd understand him but it felt rude to leave without asking. He did quite like her after all. Slightly scary shark teeth and all. He waved. 

“Well...goodbye then, I guess.” And with that he scampered off back to his father, hoping the older man wasn't too cross with him for being where he shouldn't be.

Grelle watched him go with a sad sort of frown. The bigger human on the sand must be his father she reasoned as they vanished from her line of sight. He'd let out some more chirps before he'd left, maybe that meant something. She would come back the next day, she decided. Maybe he'd be there and he could teach her more human words. That'd be fun she thought; with a flick of her tail she too headed home.

She never told her sisters what happened that day, though Frances scolded her over missing her lessons, nor did she speak of the human she'd met. He was her secret. A secret best friend that only she knew of and over the next few years she and the human, Bard, met up frequently. She even managed to figure out how to say her name in human. It sounded funny when she said it. Grelle. And his name was Bard. And though she didn't quite understand why, when she thought about him her heart would be filled with an odd warmth.


End file.
